


A String to Hang a Wish From

by immoral_crow



Category: Tenet (2020)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26360302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immoral_crow/pseuds/immoral_crow
Summary: Sometimes the smallest things weigh the most
Relationships: Neil/The Protagonist (Tenet)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 106





	A String to Hang a Wish From

**Author's Note:**

  * For [johanirae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/johanirae/gifts).



He’s not sure why he takes it.

It seems like a good idea at the time; the guy took a bullet for him and he will never know who that he was or why he did it. It’s a small thing; an easily concealed thing. He unties the string and takes the washer and slips it into his pocket; a fit of sentimentality he will probably regret later, but nothing he can’t drop when he doesn’t want to have to deal with it. 

Later when he sees Neil walking away, when he wants to tell him and can’t, when he sees the knowledge written all over Neil’s face, held in every line of his body, he’s glad he did it. When he says goodbye, when he hears his future – Neil’s past – the washer is warm in his hand. A symbol of faith – in the fact of the universe continuing, in the need to take action anyway. 

Maybe he will keep it. 

It lives in the bottom of his bag, or in a coat pocket, or, sometimes, on a chain around his neck. The years are long even when time becomes optional, and holding faith can be harder than he imagined. Even if they will meet again, he has to work out what he’s doing first… why he’s doing it. Build the structures and secrets of an organisation that he has seen in the fullness of its power. 

It’s long; it’s difficult; it’s lonely. Fortunately he is the sort of man for whom this is something to be welcomed rather than run from. 

When he sees Neil again, it isn’t anything like he imagined it would be. 

“You’re holding a child hostage?” Neil asks, pretending to be cool with every inch of hauteur an eighteen year old can possess. It isn’t enough to hide the fear in his eyes. 

“I’m doing what I need to,” he tells Neil, unworried. He’ll be forgiven. He knows that for a certainty. 

He doesn’t recruit him, not straight away. It won’t be the way you expect Neil had told him once, back in the future, or the past. Even after all these years he’s still not sure. 

But they bump into each other, again, again… more often than chance could explain. 

“Are you following me?” He asks one night, forearm pressed to Neil’s throat, body pinning Neil to the sticky wall of the club he thought would be a good spot for a drop. He can feel the frantic thrum of Neil’s pulse against his skin, though he’d never know it from the sly quirk to Neil’s lips. 

“Could be,” Neil says, and the look he shoots is somewhere between amused and appraising. “You got a problem with that?” 

There’s two ways this could go, he knows.

He chooses both. 

They’re together a while. Long enough to learn each other’s tells, know each other’s preferences. Time isn’t the absolute he thought it once was, but they work together, know each other long enough for Neil to finish his PhD, for them to train and fight, to win and lose. 

He lets his guard down. It’s an easy mistake to make. He might be getting old – there’s no way to tell. 

“What’s this?” Neil asks one night. He’d been looking for his pen and reached for the nearest jacket. There’s a red string looped loosely over his finger, the washer hanging from it like a pendulum from the one fixed point in his universe. 

“A memory,” he says. He thought he was beyond nerves by now; it would seem that he was mistaken. 

“Oh.” Neil spins it, eyes fixed on the movement. “Whose was it?”

“Someone I knew.” The room seems quieter than is natural. His mouth is dry. 

“That you loved?” Neil raises an eyebrow at him, no hint of anything other than genuine interest in his voice. 

“Maybe,” he says, then recognises cowardice when he sees it. “Yes.”

Neil nods, as if he’s just confirmed something already known and holds his hand out, offering the washer. The weight of it in his hand when he takes it feels… different. 

He weighs it; looks at it. He hadn’t thought about this until now (except for in all the ways he had, of course) but he knows what needs to be done. 

He takes Neil’s hand in his free one and turns it palm up, drops the washer and its string onto it. 

“It’s yours now,” he says, and Neil holds eye contact with him as he nods and closes his fingers around it. “What’s happened has happened,” he says, hoping that Neil can feel the weight of it, the warmth of years of body heat. “Call it a token. A symbol of faith.”

“What in?” 

He knows how lightly Neil holds the things that are most dear to him; it’s one of the reason he loves him after all. 

“That the universe continues,” he says, pressing a kiss to Neil’s knuckles, knowing what this will cost him in the end. “And that doesn’t excuse us from acting anyway.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Johanirae for encouraging me to write (and post) this. It's the first thing I have written since Christmas 2018. I wasn't expecting to start again tbh so I am very grateful for her support.
> 
> Now translated into Russian by Lin_n https://ficbook.net/readfic/9861806


End file.
